


not a drizzle, but a hurricane (an exercise in cliches)

by punkrockbadger



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, References to the Beatles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-13
Updated: 2014-10-13
Packaged: 2018-02-21 02:31:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2451368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkrockbadger/pseuds/punkrockbadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m not the kind of girl people bring flowers for, too often.”</p><p>“I should change that.” Lorcan smiles, crooked and uneven, and she smiles back.</p><p>“Yeah. You should.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	not a drizzle, but a hurricane (an exercise in cliches)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EliteDelieght](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EliteDelieght/gifts).



> For the greatest writing partner ever.

Rose is a legend before she has fingernails, has her life planned out for her by hundreds of writers before the webbing between her fingers and toes melts away, and there are betting pools on everything from the color of her hair to her favorite parent before her heart has started beating.

She arrives half a month late, with hair redder than a bonfire and a pair of strong lungs to match, and blazes her own path despite what others have planned for her.

Lorcan is none of those things. His parents rarely speak of their roles in the war, his mother’s only response to her story being written into history books being a soft laugh that spreads contagiously like a ray of moonlight filtering into a dark room. Mum is still scared of the dark. His father, on the other hand, prefers tending to his plants to killing snakes, and Lorcan is very thankful for that. Killing snakes, his father said once, is an awfully messy affair, and once is more than enough. But Lorcan is not brave, like his father, or wise, like his mother, or even a dreamer, like his brother.

Lorcan is the second born, the old soul, the leading man’s keeper, and he follows the path set for him by the order of his birth.

He wonders whether the girl with the fiery hair and bright blue eyes will look his way, now and then, and her laugh feels like sunshine seeping into his skin, lighting him from within, and he imagines that he glows, when the lights are out, because every cell in his body has captured some small bit of her happiness and reflects it back.

He is the moon to her sun, reflecting her light back at her so she can see how beautiful she is, and the lamp to light her way and a hundred other metaphors cast themselves over and in and between the two of them, but he doesn’t care.

Their story isn’t original, but what matters is that it exists.

* * *

He is a third year when Rose joins him in Ravenclaw, smiling brightly as she becomes the first Weasley in generations to be sorted into Rowena’s house, and she sits down right next to him, much to his surprise. Rose has never been particularly fond of him, nor of anybody outside her family, and he realizes that it may be because the Gryffindor table is clearly visible from the seat right next to him. Albus is laughing loudly, head thrown back with reckless abandon as he reacts to some joke that Fred has told, and the look in her eyes is something on the wrong side of mournful.

He knows the feeling. Watching Lysander at a table other than his own tugs at his heartstrings every time, but he is coming to realize that maybe their separation was for the best. His brother will grow into his own, and then, maybe he will come back. Lorcan runs a hand through the wavy brown hair he inherited from his grandfather and smiles in her direction, nudging her gently with his elbow.

“It’s alright, Ro. He’ll be fine without you.” The childhood nickname coaxes a shy smile out of her, a diminutive born of a complaint that James, Albus, Hugo and Lily all had nicknames despite their names hardly being any longer than hers, and he feels the nervousness that has her coiled tight like a spring melt away. “He’s a Potter, after all. He’s built to last.”

“And what am I, then?” She smirks, her words a challenge, and Lorcan pauses a moment before replying.

“An Erumpent.” The words fly out of his mouth and she looks puzzled, frowning just slightly. “You’re like… living fireworks.”

“I’ve never gotten that one before.” She giggles, a hand coming up to cover her mouth, and he grins in satisfaction as triumph bubbles up in his chest. It’s an unfamiliar feeling, winning, but it is warm and solid, and he thinks he will hold onto it for as long as it will have him. “An Erumpent. Gosh, Mum will love that one.”

“Do you, though?” He asks, throat suddenly dry, and she nods, blue eyes alight with some emotion he can’t name, but knows, deep in the cockles of his heart, and he smiles.

* * *

She rises early and comes in just before curfew, Lorcan notes, because he is the only one who wakes earlier and sleeps later than she does. It comes of living with a mother with a schedule that changed at the drop of a hat, he muses, this need to be awake in case something monumental happened.

But for every day that she is missing, there is one where Potter and Malfoy, in equal states of disarray, wait outside the Ravenclaw portrait, asking questions of the painting rather than just answering the riddle, and it makes Lorcan laugh when they inevitably end up confusing both themselves and the painting.

She smiles more freely and laughs more loudly, when she is with them, and he catches her singing a few times. Her voice is beautiful, he thinks, watching her from afar, until he hears a cough behind him and turns around to see two familiar Gryffindors, with identical expressions of amusement, smirking at him.

“If you want to be friends with Ro, just ask her.” Roxy remarks, shrugging dramatically. “She’s not that hard to pin down, to be honest.”

“Don’t be a chicken, Longbottom.” Freddie winks at Lorcan, clapping him on the back before pushing him forward. “You’re the Snakeslayer’s kid. Act like it, every once in awhile.”

Lorcan nods, calling upon whatever shred of courage his father has left him, and strides forward with purpose.

* * *

Rose is abuzz with excitement during November of her fourth year and Lorcan knows why.

She won’t admit it, but she’s thrilled by the possibility of boys asking her to the ball, so he makes his move as soon as possible. He’s been waiting for this moment for awhile, and has it planned down to the second, and she smiles that bright smile that only Potter and Malfoy have ever gotten and shakes her head. “I’ve been waiting for that for awhile, now, to be honest. Cory says you’ve been mooning over me for ages.”

“I—I don’t _moon_ over people.” Lorcan sputters, stomping his foot like a child, and Rose only laughs harder for it.

“I’ll be your date, Longbottom. Just don’t look too cute, or I’ll have trouble showing you up.” She giggles in a way he had no idea that the Indomitable Rose Weasley was capable of and practically skips away. He stares after wondering if he should have said anything more, and settles for silence, as he often does.

* * *

 “Girls are _weird_ ”, He tells his father over a private dinner, and Neville Longbottom laughs.

“Lor, did I ever tell you how your mum and I fell in love?” Lorcan shakes his head and Neville runs a hand through his slightly thinning hair. “That’s more or less the summary of the whole thing anyway. I’m lucky to have gotten her, after all the fumbling about I did.”

“Like father, like son, looks like.” Lorcan sighs. “Sander hardly has a problem with any of this, but no, I wait on a girl who’s been waiting on me the entire time.”

“Exactly identical, aren’t we? The two of us?” Neville chuckles. “The Longbottom men, hopeless in love.”

“With a name like Longbottom, no wonder.” Lorcan snorts and Neville throws up his hands, groaning. “Thanks, Dad. I… needed that.”

“You’ll do each other a lot of good.” Neville says, before turning to his grading. “If you choose to pursue it.”

“I’m not a Gryffindor, Dad. I don’t run for things.” Lorcan edges towards the doorway, but stops when his father speaks, without even looking up.

“Neither is your mother and she’s the reason any of us are still here.” Neville points the feathery end of his quill at his son. “Just because you’re not a Gryffindor doesn’t mean you can’t be courageous.”

“Guess you’d know more than me, really.” Lorcan shrugs, and Neville shakes his head, sighing. “She won’t wait for me to figure things out all the way, will she?”

“If she’s anything like either of her parents, your clock’s ticking.” Lorcan swallows hard and runs for Ravenclaw Tower.

He kisses her the next Tuesday.

* * *

He waits at the foot of the stairs to the girl’s dormitory on the day of the ball, twenty-two minutes early, with a bouquet of flowers redder than her hair. She looks even more stunning than usual, as she descends them, and he drops the flowers, carefully picking them up as he tries to stammer out an explanation.

“You brought them, and that’s what counts.” She shrugs, accepting them when offered. “I’m not the kind of girl people bring flowers for, too often.”

“I should change that.” Lorcan smiles, crooked and uneven, and she smiles back.

“Yeah. You should.” She grabs his hand with her free one and thunders down the stairs, barely avoiding tripping over her robes with his help, and they dance until the last of the teachers leave. Thankfully, Lorcan’s inherited his father’s skill in that department, if not any others, and Rose knows how to fake her way through a waltz.

* * *

“Do you wish you could be free of it all, sometimes?” She asks as he spins her around. This is their second, and last, Yule Ball. In six months, he will be working at the Ministry, where he’s secured himself a research position on a team studying the limits of nonverbal spell casting, and she will be on summer break, counting down the days until her return to Hogwarts. “The expectations?”

“Sometimes.” He frowns slightly, because he’s never considered any of his life as something extraordinary, something strange. He grew up in a happy home, knowing both of his parents loved him, and at least one of them would be home at all times, if not both. He had all the toys he could have wanted, all the books he could have needed and people to hold who would hold him back.

But he is not the child of two members of the Golden Trio, only the second son of the second trio that no one remembers.

“Y’know, Ro, I think you’re the strongest person I know.” He dips her, suddenly, and she squeals. “A lesser person would have crashed and burned a long time ago.”

“I get by with a little help from my friends.” She winks and he blinks in surprise, feeling like there is something he should be getting, but has missed out on. “Oh, man, you don’t…”

They spend the next two weeks holed up in a corner of the common room, playing old records that Ro’s grandparents have sent her, and no one mentions that Ro leans a little further into Lorcan when All You Need Is Love starts playing, a hand moving to cover one of his, which sits just above the curve of her hipbone.

Five and a half months later, he is sitting in a boat which seems much smaller than it had seven years before, feeling as if he is too big for his skin. She is on a train, miles ahead of him, and he wonders if it will last these next two years, if she’ll leave him behind for someone better or they’ll become even greater than the people they’re so constantly compared to.

“We’re Ravenclaws, Lor.” She’d rolled her eyes when he proposed the idea of breaking up a week before. “We’ll find a way to make anything work.”

“Even this?” He’d raised an eyebrow as she chuckled.

“That’s what Hogsmeade weekends are for. Well, boyfriends and illegal drinking, but you know which part I’m looking forward to.” She’d nudged him with her elbow. “We’re going to be alright.”

“All you need is love”, Lorcan quips, and she nearly falls over laughing.


End file.
